› added 8 months ago

30

TIL the original endowment for the Smithsonian was lost due to being invested in bad treasury bonds issued by Arkansas, and had to be restored with new funds from Congress with interest. It was the equivalent to $220 million dollars adjusted for inflation and GDP.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

8M5a TIL Michigan was the third jurisdiction in the world, after the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Liechtenstein, to abolish the death penalty. They did so shortly after entering the Union, in 1846.
mgRY TIL that in South Asia widowed women were once routinely burned alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres. A British general outlawed it, saying “This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile… But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them.”
aGQb TIL in 1984 celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan, the actor Martin Sheen, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and PGP-creator Phil Zimmermann were in police jail together. They had been arrested after breaking into the Nevada nuclear test site.
lo6B TIL the longest, most accurate shot with a bow was made by a man with no arms
DQAMD TIL that the visual effects of the film, The Fountain, cost only a total of $140,000 on a budget of $35 million due to macro photographer Peter Parks’ creative solutions and a bare minimum of CGI.